What I Learned From My Year of NOT Homeschooling Plus Free Printable

At the beginning of this year, I made the decision to back off on homeschooling and learn about my child. We didn’t enroll her in another school. What did we do that whole year? Why did we do that?

Read on friends.

Why Did You Decide Not to Homeschool This Year

There are a lot of reasons. I tell the story behind the decision in this post.

Basically:

I didn’t know how to get her to do her work without it getting emotional on both ends

Chores weren’t getting done because we spent so much time battling

I didn’t know what she liked, so I couldn’t make lessons more interesting to her

No one was happy!

You Went the Whole Year Without Doing Any School?

Not exactly.

I enrolled her in a local online school for social studies and science. The school required so little in those subjects. I was able to train her to work without whining (or screaming) about it for short periods of time.

After a few months I finally got reading practice in. Right before bed. You would think that would be a terrible time, but she is finally calm and can handle sitting still for 30 minutes (she basically never stops moving all day). It had the extra benefit that when she refused to work, she went straight to bed. Her stalling techniques now include doing school work 🙂

As we progressed through the year, I would introduce different kinds of lessons and keep track of what her reaction was.

But doing schoolwork didn’t take up much of our energy.

What Did You Do If You Weren’t Doing School

There were two huge problems in the way of us having awesome school years.

She didn’t like being told what to do (about anything)

I didn’t know how to react when she refused to do something (chores, school, etc…)

So, this year we spent a lot of time training. Training how to sleep, how to cheerfully do chores, what will happen if you refuse. I got better and better at not freaking out over attitude and letting her make the choice to not do chores and take the consequence.

Our hard work is paying off. In part because I started using a bullet journal to tell her what to do (no more nagging) and in part because she is an awesome, bright child that just needed some discipline.

Last year, there were battles over everything and she was sleeping about 9 hours at night. After spending these past nine months working on chores and sleep, she is sleeping 11 hours (trust me she needs them) and she rarely battles about anything. It’s amazing. She has even started cheerfully responding when I ask her to do something. Leading me to say in shock, “Who are you and can you stay around for a while?”

Weren’t You Worried About Her Falling Behind

I think there is too much push to be “on grade level”. So, no, not worried. I know from experience teaching middle school that if you wait until a student is older to teach them, they will learn a lot faster.

Even though we weren’t doing a lot of formal schooling, she was still learning.

Spending the year focused on discipline will pay back every year. I am so glad we did it and didn’t worry about her status.

How Did You Keep Track of Her Interests and What Did You Do With Them?

There were several times in the day were I would make a list of all of the things I noticed her enjoying or playing with. I actually made a printable if you want to try it.

At the end of the week, I would look at the list of things and see if there is any way to use the things she is interested in and get what I want done.

When she was really into dinosaurs, I checked out lots of books on dinosaurs for her to read from, I made my own story problems related to dinosaurs. Even practicing skip counting was more fun when we were counting groups of eggs.

What’s the Plan for This Year?

This year, I want to focus on getting as many subjects with all of the kids together as I can, including math. I think the attitude problem is mostly taken care of (although I am sure there will be days) otherwise, there is no way I would even attempt this.

I am also going to focus on handwriting, it’s something she absolutely hates. I think it’s time we pushed passed that. Also, not something we could have done much of last year.

I am planning on making my own math units based on interests that I can use with the three older students. We’ll see how that works out. It should be interesting.

What About You, the Reader?

Have you ever taken significant time off? Are you interested in doing so?

I hope you enjoyed yourself while you were here. If you wouldn’t mind, it would be sweet if you could share it!

Would you like to see how some other homeschooling years went? Click on the picture:

Comments

I have seriously considered it, we adopted half siblings this year from foster care. They’ve been in our home since October and it takes time to learn about each other and come together as a family. I feel like if they could just read a bit better, we could take a break from “formal” school work on other areas. I sent the article to my husband to get his input. The post doesn’t mention the age of your daughter when you did this-or did I miss that?

I am not sure you will read this, and I shudder to think how many people are going to post something about my post. I have never responded to anything like this before. Maybe this will be the last time. 🙂
It sounds like you are an educator. I am as well. I am reluctant to post anything here, because obviously, I am not there with your child. It does sound like you have really taken the time to get to know your child and build relationship. That’s so important. I know you will never regret that time spent together. You will gain far more than you “lost.” But…you mentioned something in your post that stood out to me. You mentioned something about your daughter’s handwriting. (that you are going to work on that this year, because it’s been a challenge). When you said that (coupled with your description of the challenges you had in the past with her doing her work. It may be worth having your daughter assessed for something called dysgraphia and perhaps eye tracking. Sometimes (for some reason) they go hand in hand. You have to ask for the tests specifically from someone who does educational testing. And that person may not be able to do the eye tracking test. If your daughter’s handwriting looks wispy or or she grips her pencil and bears down really hard when writing, that is another indicator of dysgraphia. If she reads slowly or still uses her finger to keep her place or says the words look like they are moving, that is another indicator of eye tracking. The eye only have to be off by a couple of millimeters for it to be a problem. The great news is that technology totally solves the dysgraphia (this is really just an issue with the child getting what’s in their head physically written down on paper). The eye tracking can be fixed with exercises that strengthen the eye muscles. Both of these issues are often barriers for really bright children getting what they know down on paper or product to show what they know.
Maybe there is nothing. Maybe I should have just kept my thoughts to myself. Maybe you will never read this. Maybe this will just upset people. That’s certainly not my intent. Just sharing info and my experiences working with kids of all ages for the last 30 years. I am sure your daughter is blessed to have you as her mom and you know her best.

I read this when you wrote it, I wasn’t offended. I hadn’t thought about dysgraphia. I read about dysgraphia and decided to wait and watch. About 6 months later she suddenly started writing. That seems to be how she learns. Thanks for commenting!

So excited to have read this post! This has been my life this year!! Working on discipline and sleep with my 7yo dd school takes an extreme backseat to the important work of changing her bad attitude and misbehavior. We still “do school” about once a week but the struggle is real, my daughter also dislikes to work on handwriting, I have found she does better with her handwriting after she has worked on typing. Working on a schedule is our next course of action. Thank you so much for sharing this it really boosted my confidence (I’m not ruining her education.)

I love this post. I got home from a busy day at work and sick, and wanted to catch up around the web. I was so encouraged to see you, working so hard to reach your daughter in a way she can learn. Great job!
Thank you

When happily had 3 more children (3+3=6) join our family in 2013. Before that we were seriously rigid and n ores stiff education drill sergeants. We took about 6 months off when they came for our new family of 8 to bond and mesh. It was so eye opening what we observed from that time. That learning never stops even when we did not initiate it. This ended up being our transition into child-led learning and our kids are learning more today than they ever did with workbooks in their face 6 hours a day. That TIME OFF was a gateway into what works really well for our family. We use Evernote to track their daily activities and interests!

My 6-y-o daughter and I have gotten lots of use out of your activity logs. We’re unschoolers, but we’re keeping documentation just to be on the safe side– these are the best resource we’ve found yet. We also edit the “Watched” box to include “and Listened To” because we love educational podcasts and radio. Thank you for the wonderful unschool-friendly printable!!!

I would love to learn in depth how you trained her attitude to be better and to actually listen without a lot of backlask. I have an 11 yr old son who is going to be my undoing. He dislikes writing, math, reading, just about anything I want him to do. His sleeping patterns are horrible, we have seen doctors and even been to a Psychologist. It is suspected that he has anxiety but due to his age he cannot and should not be treated for it. Life is a battle for us. He has two younger siblings who I fill like are not getting what they need due to my arguing with my son. I could really use the knowledge you have to help me with my son.